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LESSON 5 · AI Explained: From Buzz to Basics

The Privacy Trade-off

AI's power depends on data — usually your data. Facial recognition requires databases of faces. Personalized medicine requires health records. Better recommendations require behavioral tracking.

The question is not whether to use data but how to use it ethically. Anonymization often fails because AI can re-identify individuals from surprisingly small datasets — as few as four location points can uniquely identify 95% of people.